Yes, I've spent Saturday night reading a Deborah Solomon interview with James Inhofe...
...which is fine, because it might be the most hilariously terrifying piece of journalism I've read in possibly ever (thanks to the senator, not Debs). Here's an excerpt:
Solomon: You have also been a vocal critic of the president’s plans to close the naval base at Guantánamo and to try some suspected terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court, in New York.
Inhofe: I’ve been to Gitmo. Why don’t you go? I’d like to invite you. You know, I consider Gitmo a real resource. The people there are treated probably better than they are in the prisons in America. They have more doctors and medical practitioners per inmate. They’re eating better than anyone has ever eaten before.
You think the detainees at Guantánamo eat better than you do?
I’m talking about before they got in there, what they ate back in Yemen or wherever they came from. One of the big problems is they become obese when they get here because they’ve never eaten that good before. Can you tell me one reason to close Gitmo?
Because it’s on foreign soil, where prisoners don’t have the same legal rights as prisoners tried here, and we want to apply the same laws to everybody.
You want to apply the same laws to terrorists that are captured as you do to criminals in America?
Yes.
Wow.
Because we have to take the high road as Americans.
8. The fact that I have practically nothing in common with the dude who approached me at the gym today, asking (a) where the young gays hang out and (b) what the age of consent is in Louisiana. Yeesh.
Cory Doctorow has written a really interesting comparison of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica, and in the process, he's made a great point about evolving notions of "authority" and "expertise".
In a nutshell: we, as info connoisseurs, have become highly media savvy, and that's given us a jaundiced of news anchors, journalists, bloggers, and even previously unimpeachable sources like Britannica. We're wary of grand pronouncements, we understand that news outlets can have agendas, we've learned that following the money (e.g. all the way back to creepy-con Rupert Murdoch) can shed some very bright light on "objective truths". And thus:
While the Britannica says, *These facts are true*, Wikipedia says, *It is true that these facts were reported by these sources*. The Britannica contains facts, Wikipedia contains facts about facts. [BB]
Of course, skepticism works both ways: liberals laugh at Fox "News" and conservatives vilify the MSM. (Frankly, I think the fact that cons equate "liberal" with "mainstream" should tell them something about their worldview -- but then, navel-gazing is clearly liberal territory.) Still: critique is an awesome thing.
All of which begs a question that's been repeated for centuries: is there such a thing as truth, and do we want to become so relativist as to throw up our hands and say that nothing is certain?
And more importantly: don't I have less depressing, more helium-filled things to contemplate on Thanksgiving Day?
Today in marketing: Walmart fudges the numbers. No one is surprised.
TV AD: The family budget. In today's economy nobody is more committed to helping family budgets go further than Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart saves the average family about $3,100 a year, no matter where they shop.
What?! OK, how can Wal-Mart save you money if you don't shop there? Well, they say, other stores cut their prices to compete.
CHRIS HOLLINGS: The overall level of consumer prices are lower essentially anywhere you shop.
Chris Hollings is at IHS Global Insight.
HOLLINGS: So you do not actually have to shop at Wal-Mart to get these savings.
Hollings led the research Wal-Mart uses in its ad. He says by tracking Wal-Mart's expansion, his team was able to isolate an economic Wal-Mart effect. Today he says prices for retail goods are 3.6 percent lower across the board because of the chain. But to save more than $3,000 a year a, quote, "average family" would have to spend more than $83,000 shopping.
CHARLES FISHMAN: This headline number is technically accurate but misleading.
Charles Fishman is author of the book, "The Wal-Mart Effect." He points out that the median household income is less than $51,000.
FISHMAN: A family earning $51,000 a year saves about $640 a year compared to what they would otherwise have had to spend.
Not only has the Times-Picayune run an alarming article on the rapid pace of climate change, but they've also posted it to NOLA.com -- which means it's been opened up to comments. And as much as I love New Orleans, I have to admit that we have some really, really stupid people living in south Louisiana. What's worse: they've learned to type. After the second page of numbskullery, I had to close the tab. (There are five pages of comments in all. So far.)
Of course, I know that climate change denial takes place across the globe. On the network news, on Fox "news", on talk radio, on websites, people refute volumes of university studies with Dan Brown-esque flimsy evidence that global warming is some kind of conspiracy. Of course, none of these knuckle-dragging, armchair meteorologists can explain why the world's best scientific minds would collude on such a scheme -- what they'd have to gain, what they're trying to prove. These are the same people who'd like to see creationism and it's slightly buffer cousin, intelligent design, taught in classrooms. Their agenda is solely political and solely laughable.
Look, I understand that science can be used as a weapon (cf. the American Psychiatric Association's former categorization of homosexuality as a mental disorder), and I don't claim that science is apolitical, but how can anyone -- left, right, center, or libertarian -- argue that pollution is a great thing? I mean, we all understand those "Your mother doesn't work here" signs in breakrooms, right? Isn't this the same thing on a slightly larger scale?
Yesterday, someone referred to me as "gruff and menacing". I ask you: on what planet is this gruff and/or menacing? Sleepy, maybe definitely. But c'mon.
Obviously, I'm a liberal. Sure, I understand the Republican and Libertarian impulse to let people stand on their own, to allow everyone to be the captain of his or her own ship: it's a nice sentiment, one that acknowledges free will and encourages independence.
Only problem is, most of the Republicans and Libertarians I know are white folks who were born with a leg up. They may not be terrifically well educated, and they may not live in the fanciest neighborhoods, but they're very happy with what they have, and they'll go to great lengths to protect it.
Many of the Democrats I know are also white folks who are happy with what they have. The difference is, they're typically willing to share. No, things don't always play out that way in practice -- the political machines of both major parties have their own, convoluted agendas. However, underlying the Democratic ethos is the notion of helping others. And that, to me, is everything.
I'm not saying that people should be able to sit back and relax and let the government pay for bonbons and hookah parlors. But not everyone is cut out to care for him or herself. Some need a gentle push, some need help coordinating a game plan, and some need daily assistance. The Calvinist work ethic is fine -- it's been drilled into me all my life -- but I know for a fact that some people can't handle that much responsibility.
On the other hand...I don't like the fact that my voting patterns are predetermined by political affiliation. It would be nice to be able to vote for a Republican, if the situation arose. Unfortunately, the GOP social agenda makes that impossible -- and I'm not just talking about their opposition to equal rights for LGBT citizens, even though that's the part that affects me most directly. Until the party moves beyond that Religious Right crap -- which has only been adopted into the platform to appeal to the god-fearing base -- they can count me out.
Given the current crop of leaders, progress doesn't seem possible. But there may be hope down the line. Here's a bit from John McCain's daughter, Meghan, speaking about former Miss California and current anti-gay activist, Carrie Prejean. Prejean's eight recently unearthed sex tapes are causing quite a stir in the media, but not among Republicans who want to make her their pretty posterchild:
The problem I have with my fellow Republicans is why gay marriage is the trump card in any situation. It seems that as long as you are against gay marriage, any scandal in your life can be overlooked or overcome. When you are in favor of it, however—and I have been very vocal about my support—that position defines you. [Towleroad]
I couldn't have said it better myself. Why can't the Republicans read the tea leaves and tout McCain as the face of the GOP's future instead of the far-less-interesting, far-less-thoughtful, backwards-looking Prejean? Oh, wait: I think I just answered my own question.
Sloppy copy from Venables Bell bedevils an otherwise decent Intel ad
I kinda like the "Sponsors of Tomorrow" campaign that Venables Bell & Partners put together for Intel. For reasons yet to be explained, Geek Chic remains a popular trend, and VBP has capitalized on it -- humorously, cleverly, and in a visually distinctive way.
That said, the script for the spot embedded below drives me nuts. It features two nerds talking about the best way to cut a cake-cum-microchip (or maybe it's supposed to be a motherboard, which wouldn't make sense, but whatever). Eventually, a fed-up, presumably hungry fellow employee zips around the pair, lops off a corner of the cake, and walks off with a "Was that so hard?" expression.
By my thinking, the nerds' response to this act of heresy should be hilariously geekified -- like, "Fine. You explain to management how it's supposed to work without a logic gate", or, "I hope you enjoy the taste of that gallium arsenide core", or anything that continues the nerds' earlier conversation, wherein they discuss the cake as if it's an actual microchip. (I'm not always a great copywriter myself, but I'm okay at spotting problems.)
Instead, the folks at VBP decided that one of the nerds should just look after the douchebag in question and shout, "Why don't you just pop all the balloons and spit in the punch?" Which is fine in terms of cadence and consonance, but entirely misses the boat on continuity.
Of course, underlying all this is a far more important question: AM I THE ONLY IDIOT WHO OBSESSES ABOUT THESE THINGS? Take a look for yourselves and see if it's as bad as I'm making out:
BEYONCE has come under fire for her lack of knowledge about ancient Egypt – by the country’s INDIANA JONES.
Revered historian Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s chief Egyptologist, reportedly called the pop star a “stupid person” while speaking to journalists during Beyonce’s recent tour of the Giza pyramids near Cairo.
Reporter Summer al-Gamal says Hawass, who claims he inspired Harrison Ford’s Raiders of The Lost Ark character, was annoyed by the pop star’s apparent lack of interest as she toured the ancient site.
According to Gamal, Hawass said, “I showed her the Sphinx and I gave her a book on King Tutankhamen,” during his self-guided tour.
The reporter says, “Then he stopped being diplomatic and said in anger, ‘She’s a stupid person and she doesn’t understand a thing and she doesn’t want to understand… She’s coming here to take pictures and that’s it.’”
A giant "digital cloud" that would "float" above London's skyline has been outlined by an international team of architects, artists and engineers.
The construction would include 120m- (400ft-) tall mesh towers and a series of interconnected plastic bubbles that can be used to display images and data.
The Cloud, as it is known, would also be used an observation deck and park.
The unconventional structure was originally envisaged as a centre piece of the city's Olympic village.
Its designers plan to raise the funds to build it by asking for micro-donations from millions of people.
"It's really about people coming together to raise the Cloud," Carlo Ratti, one of the architects behind the design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) told BBC News.
I know I say it every week, but I'm totally serious this time: the clip posted below may be the worst commercial ever. It is to the advertising world what The Cleveland Show is to Seth MacFarlane's animation empire (which I mention only because I had the misfortune of watching that crap last night and OH GOD DOES IT CONTINUE TO SPREAD STANKNESS ACROSS THE LAND). Seriously, in a terrible contest, this ad and The Cleveland Show would be like those girls in Bring it On (and its numerous sequels) as they endeavored to outdo each other on the crap scale of craptacularosity:
For better or worse, I have a lot of writing to do these days, and much of it needs to be finished before I walk out the door to my day job. To be perfectly honest, it's become borderline overwhelming.
To improve the situation (i.e. prevent myself from going bananas, and not the Rachel Zoe way), I first tried tweaking my sleep schedule and even my writing style, but eventually it became clear that I needed outside help. As I've mentioned before -- either here or on Twitter -- I've opted for speech-to-text software.
All has not gone as planned. In my head, I had this fairly romantic, Star Trek-ish fantasy of easy, intuitive communications with my laptop. Sadly, that ain't the way The Dragon likes to roll. She's got a reasonably good vocabulary, but it takes a VERY long time to train her on the translation part. For weeks, it felt as if I were making so many corrections, I might as well have typed the stuff by hand.
And that's to say nothing of the process of writing itself. See, as it turns out, thinking and typing is much different than just speaking into a microphone. Typing is obviously slower, it's hands-on, and it's visual: you type something you don't like, you back up and pen it again. There's a chance for reflection as you see your words pop onto the screen. Using speech-to-text, on the other hand, your mouth is moving in time with your brain -- possibly faster. It makes for long sentences, conversational tone, and a bigger chunk of editing when I finish. I've begun training myself to speak slower, reflect, and dictate more like I would if I were typing, but it's not easy, learning to think before you speak. (I could point to examples in the political realm, but I'm sure you could, too.)
That said, the program and I finally seem to have reached something of a truce. I speak slowly and distinctly, pulling back on my emotions and inflection so that I don't confuse her. In return, she does a mostly good job with everything but proper names, and she's begun to shed her habit of tossing in extra "ands" and "withs". Things are livable.
I wanted to show a couple of examples of the translation in action, but just to make things interesting (and completely useless), I've thrown Miss Dragon a couple of curve balls. You'll see what I mean:
Opening passage from Nabokov's Lolita
Original Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
Translation Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Low-Lee-tot: the tip of the time taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Low. Lee. Top.
* * * * *
Opening lines from The Canterbury Tales (Read in my best Middle English accent, courtesy of Dr. Nona Feinberg)
Original Whan that aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour; Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye (so priketh hem nature in hir corages); Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; And specially from every shires ende Of engelond to caunterbury they wende, The hooly blisful martir for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
Translation One that I pre-the which he sure is. The draw of much have pasted to the Rocha, and all that every then yukking speech to the core of which there Chu and John for it is the floor; lines and if it is a good that he's safe to breath in spirit hath in every Holton Keith 10 the Acropolis, and the on some half in the round is half course you're on, and smaller file is mocking Ms. O'Dea, that second of the night with open ye (so predicting hem not sure I need you quarter I just); then long been sold to goon on to remind just, and palmettos for second strongest wrongs, to Ferne Hollis, not use laundry loans; inspection of the from every she it is and that of in the long to come the battery bay window, the only place will mark the fourth Seca, that hem hath Holton one that they would expect.
* * * * *
Jacques Prevert: "Déjeuner du matin" (A high school fave, for many obvious reasons: simplicity, angst, coffee, cigarettes)
Original Il a mis le café Dans la tasse Il a mis le lait Dans la tasse de café Il a mis le sucre Dans le café au lait Avec la petite cuiller Il a tourné Il a bu le café au lait Et il a reposé la tasse Sans me parler
Il a allumé Une cigarette Il a fait des ronds Avec la fumée Il a mis les cendres Dans le cendrier Sans me parler Sans me regarder
Il s'est levé Il a mis Son chapeau sur sa tête Il a mis son manteau de pluie Parce qu'il pleuvait Et il est parti Sous la pluie Sans une parole Sans me regarder
Et moi j'ai pris Ma tête dans ma main Et j'ai pleuré
Translation Beyond the new Café Donna pass you done the today Donna pass the Café John used to cloak Dawn the Café over day of that who could keep create but up to may be that but new Café: a eight but Outlook does it have to for soma buy they
Utah pride you may units the gap at but I think they own the of that the unit eat on me that song gonna something a solemn holiday solemn will get a big
You stated they you got me /up oldster socket a you done me some month old to read asked you prove that 8E8.keep suit up to me songs you to hold small move look out of date
A more jake please might that don't Mama AJ Pillai
Original "Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, yeahhhhhhh. Fuck me, Jerry. Fuck me, harder." Jerry leaned in, sharing a passionate, lust-filled kiss with George, all the while, fucking him harder than ever, his pubic hairy cushioning his deep thrusts, while his balls slapped George's ass. George wrapped his legs around Jerry's body, and their hairy chests met, their sweat allowing theirbodies to slide against each other with minimal friction.
Translation "That movement yeah talk to me, Jerry. Fox me, harder." Jerry leaned in, sharing a passionate, lust-filled kiss with George, all the while, foxy him harder than ever, is she big hairy cushioning his deep thrusts, while his balls slapped Georges ass. George wrapped his legs around Jerry's body and their hairy chests met, their sweat allowing their bodies to slide against each other with minimal friction.
Delta and SkyWest may be sued for anti-gay discrimination
Today in STUPID PR TRICKS, we feature the formerly friendly folks at SkyWest and Delta Airlines, who refuse to offer the same travel benefits to gay, married employees as those enjoyed by straight, married employees. To wit:
"In a six-page letter to the airlines, attorney Tara L. Borelli, with Lambda Legal, contends her client, Gilbert Caldwell, and his spouse, the Rev. David Farrell, are enduring employment discrimination due to a SkyWest travel policy that refuses to extend its benefits to same-sex spouses 'while heterosexual employees' spouses are fully respected automatically.' The Oct. 29 letter is the first step before formally suing SkyWest and Delta, Borelli said Friday.' In this incident, they are refusing to treat Gilbert in the same way as they do married, heterosexual couples,' added Borelli, a Lambda Legal staff attorney in Los Angeles. 'They should be providing travel benefits on equal terms.' ... Officials with SkyWest and Delta Airlines did not return multiple phone messages on Thursday and Friday seeking comment." [DesertSun via Towleroad]
So, class, why is that stupid?
A) It just is.
B) If Delta and SkyWest maintain their discriminatory policy, and if Caldwell and Farrell are indeed legally married in California, and if the couple move forward with their suit, Delta and SkyWest probably won't fare too well. Sounds expensive.
C) No matter which way things go for Caldwell and Farrell, the two companies' PR teams ought to get out in front of the conflamma and control the message. If you've ever had to do damage control duty before, you know it's neither pretty nor pleasant.
D) We're gays. We're brand agnostic. We're happy to boycott.
E) Delta and SkyWest surely employ hundreds if not thousands of gays and lesbians. Why piss off such a chunk (and a vocal chunk at that) of the workforce? Not the best morale-building exercise.
F) The world only spins forward. Delta and SkyWest can either be at the leading edge of the civil rights movement, or they can play George Wallace. My suggestion? Well, things didn't turn out so good for George Wallace, did they?
Few New Orleanians liked former Recovery Czar, Ed Blakely. He was distant, he was presumptuous, and he spoke without thinking. Also -- and this is a fault of our own parochialism -- he was an outsider and therefore, suspicious.
I never met the man. I don't know what he was like. All I know is that watching him on TV was unbearable: his comments reeked of the same jackass hubris that still peppers Ray Nagin's cringe-inducing interviews. Grand pronouncements, back-slapping self-congratulations, all that junk.
However, as the [terribly edited] two-part interview above shows, Blakely did pick up a few things here. He may or may not have had any impact on our city's recovery, but at least he understands now what we're up against -- and I don't mean levee walls and rising sea temps. Of course, you'd have to be a complete idiot to miss the racism -- both black and white -- that informs every move in city politics, but given my low expectations of the man...well, I'm pleasantly surprised he got it.
That said, Blakely is way out of line when, speaking of the recovery process, he says that "New Orleanians expected someone else to do it all along.... They never expected to do it themselves." That may have been true over on Perdido Street (was there ever a more apt street name?), but if the son of a bitch had gotten out of City Hall and into the neighborhoods and seen the work that people were doing -- cleaning up, building networks, starting community organizations, attending endless planning meetings -- he might've understood where the real impediments lay.
The man's no idiot, but he's kind of an idiot, if you catch my drift.
New Orleans is not the place to live if you're paranoid about safety. Things happen here -- good, bad, accidental, deliberate, and frequently unpleasant.
Of course, the city's neighborhoods aren't created equally. Despite its reputation as a hub for vice, the French Quarter is one of the safest places you can live in New Orleans. The streets are busy, the police patrols are frequent, and many of the residents are tourists, which makes local-on-local crime less likely.
Less likely, but not impossible.
As the big party weekend began ramping up last Friday night, somebody or somebodies decided to celebrate Halloween in a particularly cruel and unusual way: by stabbing a well-known surgeon in his French Quarter home, then setting fire to the place. Dr. Ralph Newsome was pronounced dead that evening, after being taken to the LSU hospital.
I didn't know Dr. Newsome. I'm not even sure I recognize his face in the photo above -- which is unusual, since New Orleans is a pretty small town. Making it doubly unusual is the fact that Newsome was gay, and for one reason or another, we gays tend to know one another, at least on sight.
That's not to diminish the tragedy of Newsome's death, of course, only to say that I didn't know him: I didn't know his likes, his dislikes, his personal preferences, what he ate for breakfast, how he took his coffee, or the other minutae of his too-short life that friends and family will remember over the weeks, months, years to come. I can't say anything about Newsome at all, but judging from the fact that he was a gardener and kept tortoises, I think we would've hit it off really well.
Over at Towleroad, most commenters have jumped to the conclusion that Newsome was killed by what used to be called "rough trade". I'm sorry to say, that was the first thought that crossed my mind, too. The area of the Quarter where he Newsome lived is well known for its population of muscled-up straight boys whose allegiance to money and crystal meth frequently outweighs their devotion to the female of the species. Mix gay-for-pay with gay-for-meth and...well, it's proven lethal before.
But none of that's been confirmed by the police. So far as I know, no details have been released at all. Conjecture leads to the worst kind of stereotyping (is there a better kind of stereotyping?): as proof, look no further than some of the knuckle-draggers leaving comments at NOLA.com. I'm trying to steer clear.
All I know is that murders in the French Quarter are rare; they galvanize locals who are fed up with the city's piecemeal system of policing and justice; that New Orleans has lost a handsome, talented, and by all accounts loving man; and that if I were that man's partner, I would be out for blood.
